John – Whenever you read Wolcott writing about the Corner, picture a kid sitting alone in the high school cafeteria, eating his brown bag lunch while muttering constantly about how those kids at the other table are all a bunch of losers who really shouldn’t be having a good time because they aren’t as cool as they think they are. Perhaps alone among all leftwing bloggers, he’s the only one who I honestly believe is truly, completely, and unalterably wracked with jealousy. Virtually, all of his posts about us — and conservatives generally — are substance-free (or boringly hackneyed). All, of them are the kind of jabs one expects to hear from a male hairdresser about the more successful competition across the street. And they always recycle the same jokes, over and over again.
For example, he’s now made I think a half-dozen fat jokes about me (I don’t read him regularly, but from the emails I get that sounds about right). That’s fine, I suppose. Though since I’ve been making fat jokes about myself for several years now, it’s hardly what one might call original. Plagiarizing someone else’s self-deprecating remarks is bad enough. But it’s particularly ill-advised given this.